Lockdales

A private medal collection rated by Ipswich saleroom Lockdales (18% buyer’s premium) as “magnificent” was offered on May 20-22.

This Victorian tailor-made military uniform by A Succaram Tookaram & Sons, Tailors, 273 Main Street, Poona was estimated at £150-200 at Lockdales (18% buyer’s premium) in Ipswich.

Although Roamer fell victim to the ‘quartz crisis’ – the introduction of quartz watches in the 1970s and early 1980s that largely replaced mechanical watches – in the 1950s-60s the firm enjoyed a good reputation as the maker of good-quality, affordable automatic mechanical watches.

The German Maxim machine gun was used to devastating effect on Allied troops during the First World War.

Entered from the estate of an Ipswich craftsman-hobbyist, the corpulent figures shown below were two of his 144 wood carvings which met unexpected demand.

Introduced in 1960, the Bulova Accutron 214 was among the first commercially successful electronic watch.

Weapons proved a highlight of the Lockdales (18% buyer’s premium) Coins, Medals & Militaria auction on January 23-24 held during the third lockdown.

Toys from the Attack Force range are not the earliest of the Airfix models, but they are perhaps the most desirable.

As collectors are squeezed out of the market for watches by Rolex and Omega, prices for vintage chronographs by ‘lesser’ makers are steadily rising in value.

As the Scottish regiments went over the top on July 1, 1916 – the fateful First Day of the Somme – they were led into battle by the wail of bagpipes.

Among the most successful printing projects marking the Napoleonic Wars were the series of aquatints by Thomas Sutherland (1785-1838) after watercolours by the young William Heath (c.1795-1840) titled The Martial Achievements of Great Britain and Her Allies from 1799 to 1815.

Since its launch in 1953 there have been well over a dozen distinct references of the Rolex Submariner, with all sorts of minutiae adding up to several hundred different variants.

Before British female nurses could even help with the wounded they faced a battle to be accepted, as the story behind a medal winner reveals.

When buying back their heritage, Cardiff City FC and supporters may not be in the same financial league as Manchester United, but they were a welcome factor at Lockdales (19.5% buyer’s premium).

Less often seen than Suffragette propaganda and considerably less PC these days, a brass and enamel fob badge for the National League for Opposing Woman had its international admirers at Ipswich auction house Lockdales (19.5% buyer’s premium).

A cache of military diving watches sold in Hampshire and a £125,000 Daytona spotlight the thriving market for vintage mechanical ‘tool’ watches.

Catalogued as a ‘tin glazed hand painted Chinese vase – 17in (42cm) tall’ and estimated at £50-80, a late 17th century Kangxi period famille verte porcelain vase of waisted trumpet form sold on June 22 for a healthier £12,000 – 150 times the top estimate.